We Are Not Saved

In 1519 Cortés began his invasion of the Aztec empire. By 1520 Montezuma would be dead, and by 1521 the empire would have fallen. Within the next half dozen decades 95% of the Aztecs would be dead of disease. But Montezuma and the Aztecs had almost no warning of the cataclysm that was about to befall them. Is there some cataclysm waiting in our future which we will similarly be completely ignorant of until it is upon us? Probably. If that's the case what measures could we possibly take?

My annual episode where I look back on predictions I've made in the past (particularly my 100 year predictions) and make some predictions for the upcoming year. As you might imagine there would be no point of making 2020 predictions if I didn't cover the upcoming presidential election. I think there's a lot going on there, and while Bloomberg hasn't made a big impact he might still do that. Also Biden looks increasingly shaky as a front runner. Whatever happens it's going to be chaotic, but I take a stab at saying what exactly that chaos will look like.

Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age By: Bear F. Braumoeller Tower Lord (Raven’s Shadow #2) By: Anthony Ryan Oath of Swords (War God #1) By: David Weber The War God’s Own (War God #2) By: David Weber Aeschylus II: The Oresteia- Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, Proteus (Fragments) By: Aeschylus The New Testament: A New Translation for Latter-day Saints (Religious) Translated By: Thomas A. Wayment The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition (Religious) Annotated by: Grant Hardy Republican Party Animal: The “Bad Boy of Holocaust History” Blows the Lid Off Hollywood’s Secret Right-Wing Underground By: David Cole Utterly Dwarfed (The Order of the Stick #6) By: Rich Burlew Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus By: Wizards RPG Team A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul By: Leo Tolstoy The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations for Clarity, Effectiveness, and Serenity By: Ryan Holiday The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churc

A recent debate on the dangers of pornography, and whether government should restrict things more or whether people just need to "parent better" plus an article about "total sexual freedom" causing the collapse of a nation within three generations are all tied together into a discussion of how to deal with more subtle eschatological concerns.

The title pretty much says it all, but in case you don't know what an Eschatologist is, an eschatologist is someone who studies eschatology. And eschatology is "a part of theology concerned with the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. This concept is commonly referred to as the 'end of the world' or 'end times'. In my discussion of eschatology I intend to broaden the definition both horizontally (to include secular concerns) and vertically (to include not merely the end of the world, but the end of the nation).

My book reviews for November: The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why By: Amanda Ripley The Mapping of Love and Death (Maisie Dobbs, #7) By: Jacqueline Winspear The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution By: Francis Fukuyama The Odyssey By: Homer Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl By: Harriet Ann Jacobs You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life By: Jen Sincero Ayoade on Top By: Richard Ayoade Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business By: Neil Postman Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology By: Neil Postman Midnight Riot (Peter Grant, #1) By: Ben Aaronovitch Aeschylus I: The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliant Maidens, Prometheus Bound By: Aeschylus

In 1985 Neil Postman published the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death". The central claim of the book was that TV had replaced the superior epistemology of the printed word with an inferior version focused entirely on entertainment. Now TV itself has been replaced as the dominant medium by the internet and social media. What epistemology has it brought with it, and is it better than TV or far, far worse?

After getting significant pushback I revisit my evaluation of Bryan Caplan's argument for open borders. I continue to maintain that if the average GDP of the US drops by half that some low-skilled workers will be caught in that. Even if many people end up benefiting. I bring in Garett Jones' argument against Caplan along with Caplan's response.

In the book War! What is it Good For? by Ian Morris, he speculates that the world has been built on the back of productive war. But what happens when empire building is out of fashion and nukes make war impossible even if it wasn't. Is it possible that after using war to achieve unity over the course of thousands of years, that it will stop working just at the moment it seemed possible we might unify the whole world?

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation By: Carl Benedikt Frey Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age By: Arthur Herman All Creatures Great and Small By: James Herriot To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian By: Stephen E. Ambrose War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots By: Ian Morris The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses By: Dan Carlin Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics By: Mary Eberstadt Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration By: Bryan Caplan

A collection of ways in which atheists misunderstand the strength of their position (or rather the lack their of).  The difference between gathering evidence on the existence of something like Bigfoot as opposed to gathering evidence on the existence of God. Their ability to imagine things which in all respects meet the definition for the existence of God. They just don't like the God proposed by religions. Pascal's Mugging and the oversimplification of religious belief.

Nietzsche said that God is Dead, and that people had not reckoned with with the consequences of that. Additionally he and other's predicted that people could not be good in the absence of religion. This has proved to be incorrect, there are plenty of atheists who are good people. But how has civilization fared. Is it possible that Nietzsche and the rest were just premature in their pessimism? That the current culture war is so fierce because we don't have a common set of values to negotiate around?

Moderation is an underrated value. To achieve it we need to not merely push for moderation, we need to push back against whichever side which has become too extreme. This is the pendulum, and it swings back and forth. If we value moderation we seek to keep it as close to the center as possible, while also avoiding violent swings from side to side. Doing so requires arguing for both sides of an issue depending on which is ascendant. 

It's my monthly review of the books I read. In this episode I cover: Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition By: Shane Lacy Hensley Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea By: Steven Callahan Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence By: James Lovelock Bronze Age Mindset By: Bronze Age Pervert Why Are The Prices So Damn High? By: Eric Helland, Alex Tabarrok An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (Religious) by: John Gee The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard #1) By: Scott Lynch No More Mr Nice Guy: A Proven Plan for Getting What You Want in Love, Sex, and Life By: Robert A. Glover Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why By: Laurence Gonzales

I have heard some people, even in the comments of my this podcast, claim that we shouldn't worry about the current level of political unrest because there's nowhere for the violence to start. That we don't see the sort of large scale violence we once saw in the past. I think they're wrong I think there will be bloodshed, and the question this episode looks to answer is where does it start?

I recently read American Carnage, the story of the development of the Republican Civil War and the events which led to the current political crisis. While reading it I was struck by a question, not why is this happening now, but rather why isn't it always this way? I think I have the answer to that question and it involves nationalism, wars, immigration and most of all the sayings of the Pashtun. 

From the perspective of our system of government there are a lot of deviations currently going on. Many of them are being normalized. In the based we could correct deviations by means of amending the Constitution, but that no longer seems possible. Meaning we have largely decided to normalize them and hope that they're improvements, or at least not the kind of thing that is going to make the entire structure crash. As you might imagine I have my doubts that this is even possible.

This is the monthly episode where I review all the books I read over the past month. This time I'm mixing it up by doing very short reviews of some while doing longer reviews of the others. Here's a list of the books I mention: Extremes by Various The Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea Blood Song by Anthony Ryan The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea Once Upon a Time in Russia by Ben Mezrich The Iliad by Homer Don't Sleep There are Snakes by Daniel Everett American Carnage by Tim Alberta

All more enlightened forms of government require certain institutions and customs in order to function. Democratic capitalism doesn't work without strong contract enforcement and low corruption for example. Is it possible that there are institutions and customs yet (or about) to be discovered and implemented which would make communism work. If so would that be enough to "save" humanity? Perhaps, but there's a lot of things working against that idea as well.

I recently read an article titled How I Almost Destroyed a £50 million War Plane and The Normalisation of Deviance. In this post I examine the idea of deviance and what it means to normalize it. The article most examined it from the perspective of smaller systems, but I'm interested in what it looks like if we take the concept and apply it to society as a whole.